While us normal folk were gorging on turkey and fixings, the tireless US Patent Office was busy filing an interesting Apple patent detailing a mobile liquid cooling system—something that looks like it could be used in a future portable device.

Initially filed in May of 2007 (it's government, people!), the patent app describes a two-part cooling system for small form factors. In the first part a liquid coolant is used to transfer heat away from components (such as a quad-core mobile processor, perhaps?). In the second phase, the heat is transferred from the liquids onto a large aluminum plate which would then pass it off into the environment just as most laptop temperature management systems work today.

Whether this is just another defensive or out-there research patent, or an actually useful new way to cram more power into a smaller space via liquid cooling remains to be seen. Let's hope Apple's next patent is for a brand new battery juicy enough to power the whole system for more than 20 minutes. [US Patents Office via CrunchGear]

Contact information for this author is not available.